


Doors

by TheBabe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Claustrophobia, Episode 14 X 11, Episode 14 x 12, Future Fic, Other, Prophet and Loss, Supernatural - Freeform, episode coda, have tissues, i don't even know what else to say, season 14, spn fanfic, what if Dean does wind up in the Ma'lak box?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 22:24:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17651003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBabe/pseuds/TheBabe
Summary: I suck at summaries. This is related to the most recent episodes of Season 14 (11 & 12). If you haven't seen them, you might not understand.





	Doors

He wakes in his room in the bunker, it’s quiet, and his door is closed. He doesn’t look at it too long, he can’t. The urge to open it, to go out into the map room, or the kitchen, to find his brother, is almost overwhelming. He takes one step, then two, in that direction before he stops himself.  
He turns around and makes himself walk to his desk. He takes out his cleaning kit and gets to work, honing, cleaning, taking apart the things he can, he cleans and oils, he plays with the now-fixed Colt (when did that happen, he wonders briefly), looking through the sights at himself in the mirror. Something’s wrong. He knows it. He doesn’t look right.  
He can’t dwell on it. If he does, he’ll open that door. He puts away the weapons and his cleaning kit, knowing that it won’t work anymore. He sits down in his chair, picks up a book he’s read a hundred times before. Its weight is a comfort in his hand and so, he settles in to read one more time.  
He hears his brother calling him, but he ignores it. It’s not him. It’s the other one occupying his mind. He’s tried this before, and the best way to take away his power, is just to go on as if he weren’t there. He finishes the book, closes the cover and lays it just so on the rest of the pile.  
It’s time again. One last look in a mirror that’s fogged over. The floor is wet. An inch of water stands on it. Still. Like another mirror. He looks down and knows it’s cold. The creeping cold tries to take him over, but he ignores it. He walks to the bed and lies down on his side, face to the wall. Sleep. To dream.  
* * * *  
He’s driving. In his Baby, down a dark highway, late at night. His brother, or something pretending to be his brother, sits next to him. Deep down, Dean knows that it isn’t him. “Pull off the road,” Fake Sam says to Dean.  
Dean does, and shuts Baby off. The other opens his door and steps out, but Dean knows he can’t. He can’t open his door. It’s tried this before. It tries it every time. Dean knows this. In the first few times, he almost did, almost let it out, but something stopped his hand every time. He doesn’t know what.  
“No,” He says, talking to it. “I won’t.”  
Its face twists in anger, “One day,” it says, “you will.”  
“No,” Dean replies. “I never will.”  
* * * *  
He doesn’t open his eyes, this time. There’s nothing to see. The panic has receded long ago, and he no longer scratches, or calls out. There’s no one left to call to. They didn’t know where he went, so they could search forever and most likely never find him. He left no clues, no notes, no goodbyes. He is alone. Except for the other. There’s no comfort in that. He’s cold. And wet. His clothes, what’s left of them, are disintegrating around him. The only object he’d brought hadn’t worked for very long, but he can feel its shape lying on his stomach. Time has passed. He knows it. But he doesn’t know how long. It’s probably better that way, he thinks. They’re gone. He hopes they stopped looking, he hopes they stopped missing him, although he knows that’s not likely.  
He closes his eyes again and allows himself to sink back down.  
* * * *  
He’s in the map room. The table glows lightly, red dots blinking. There are so few of them now. Only a dozen, maybe less.  
The room looks the same as it always had since they’d found the bunker. He runs his fingers over the initials carved in the library room table. They glow slightly too, reminding him of something, of someone, but he doesn’t know what.  
A tall figure rounds the corner and stops dead in his tracks. Dean can’t see his face, or remember his name, but he knows who it is. His anchor, his reason for all of this. The one who, at the center of it all, he did this to save. Sam. The name comes to him in a whisper, and Sam pulls him into a hug. But it’s not the real Sam. He pretends for a moment that it is, that they could walk right up those stairs, open that door and step into the sun together.  
He breaks its hold and steps back. “You’re not him.”  
Anger crosses its face. “I can be anyone.” It changes shape, becomes shorter, female, the voice changes. “Dean?” Her voice soothes him, brings him back to a time when he was so young, so innocent. Before.  
“No. You can’t fool me. She’s gone.”  
He turns his back on her. Something rustles and the voice changes again. That so-familiar voice, one that he hasn’t heard since he was—he can’t remember how old, now. But he knows that voice, it gave its life for him. He sees yellow, hears the sound of gunfire.  
“I’m proud of you, son.”  
Dean’s despair crashes down on him and he lashes out, knocking the being with the face and voice of his father off of its feet. “He was not!”  
He whirls and shouts at it, “I will NEVER open that door. NEVER.”  
There’s no one there. Just an illusion. It can’t get out of its cage in his head, but it can play with his mind from inside. It can shout and cajole, it can make him see things, rattle the walls, pound on the door. But it cannot make him open it.  
* * * *  
He’s standing behind the counter. In the room, the place, where this all started. The place that in real life, was a long-held and silent dream. It’s familiar, and any second he expects his brother and the angel to come through the door, out of the rain.  
Wait.  
Dean looks around, something is off, something is not right. The sun is shining through the windows, it’s not raining, there’s no thunder. Everything is silent. He looks out at the booths. There’s someone in one of them, someone he hasn’t seen since he was very young. He was only two, almost three, but he looked like a teenager.  
He looks the same now. He hasn’t changed. Dean digs in his memory until he finds the name. Jack.  
Out from behind the bar now, he is standing next to the table. At first he thinks it’s another one of the other’s illusions, but he’s never used this one before. Dean takes a seat and asks, “What are you doing here?”  
Jack’s voice is a little deeper, although he never really aged, and it took a long time for his grace to come back, but he’s here now.  
“I came to take you home. It’s time.”  
“I can’t leave. If I do...” Dean gestures towards the cage he’s kept closed all this time, only to see it’s standing wide open. He jumps to his feet, panic making his heart race, “NO!” The inside of the door is beaten, the metal dented and scarred from all the time the other spent trying to get out.  
Jack lays a hand on his arm, “Dean. It’s ok, he’s gone. I got rid of him. He’ll never hurt anyone anywhere again. I’m real and I’m here to take you home. They’re waiting for you.”  
Dean looks back at Jack. “How...” He clears his throat and starts again, “How, how long? How do I know you’re real? He knew everything inside my head, how do I know you’re not just another illusion?”  
Jack touches Dean’s hand and everything he’s seen since Dean disappeared runs though Dean’s head. Sam and mom, frantically searching, Castiel desperately trying to find Chuck, to fix this. He sees Jack grow, his grace coming back over the years, his mom dying again, Sam going out the way he would have wanted to, trying to find and save Dean. They’ve been gone a long time. Cas still walks the earth, mentoring Jack, teaching him to be a good man. Jack found Dean. Many years ago, but until his grace was at full strength, he couldn’t help Dean. So he waited.  
And now, finally, that day has come. Dean sees the box he’s trapped in, at the bottom of the ocean. Rusted, coral around it, but still whole. He sees what Jack did. He had waited until Dean was submerged, asleep in his head and without ever opening the cage, Jack pulled Michael out and sent him to the Empty. Billie broke a rule and helped.  
Jack takes Dean’s hand and pulls him into a hug. There’s no underlying feeling of wrongness, there are no quiet whispers trying to tell him to open the door. There’s no one in his head now, but him. It’s true. Dean doesn’t understand how, but he knows this time, it’s no illusion. It’s real. He’s free. He’s going home.  
Jack steps back and asks quietly, “Are you ready?”  
Dean looks around. This place that he never got to have in real life, has been his solace and his own cage for so long. He loved it, but he’s ready to leave it. He can feel his real body, that Michael kept alive for so long, fading, his heart and breath slowing, so he knows it’s time to go. He doesn’t want to be a spirit trapped here for all eternity. He thinks he’s been here long enough.  
“Yes. I’m ready to go.” He throws the towel down and takes a last look around as Jack opens the front door, not one of the illusions had ever been able to do that. His last doubt fades away as he sees the sunlight waiting for him. Jack walks across the threshold and waits for Dean to cross too. The light fades to a steady warm sunshine and they walk into an open field.  
* * * *  
He sees, Sam, running to meet him and is lost for a moment in the tightness of his chest, the warm solid arms around him. He squeezes Sam back and reaches up to make sure this is real. He’s solid and slightly crying and still smiling. “I missed you so much, Dean.”  
Their mother touches his arm and their father smiles at him before they are all around him, hugging and trying not to cry. They’re so happy to see him, they missed him so much. At last they stop for a moment, although none of them seem to want to be where they can’t touch him.  
Jack smiles and backs away to make room for Castiel. He is welcome again in Heaven, he drops in occasionally to see how things are going. He smiles before saying, “Welcome home, Dean. You did what no one else could ever have done, and now, you can rest.” He pulls Dean into a hug and says, “The Winchesters are done. Your jobs are all completed, you made the world safe. Go, enjoy your family, Dean, you’ve earned it.”  
“Cas,” Dean starts, “What Jack did,”  
Cas’s hand lands on Dean’s shoulder and he squeezes lightly, “No, Dean. I didn’t tell him and I couldn’t help. It was all Jack. He didn’t want you to be there forever, and he pushed until he could fix it.”  
“Now, you’re home, and all is right with eternity. I’ll be around, as will Jack. Your heavens are all connected by that road,” Cas turns and points to the long winding stripe of blacktop and Baby sitting on it, gleaming in the morning light. “And you can go anywhere. There are no more monsters to hunt. No more demons.”  
They all crowd around Dean again, hugging, touching, smiling, laughing and crying.

“Welcome home, Dean.”


End file.
